To be fair, shirtless men are a lot less common in urban India. Not the same in the "countryside" or villages as we refer to rural areas.

India has certain public decency laws which prohibits exposure (not sure if shirtless would qualify), PDA, etc.

India is also famously not one of the fitter countries - so it's also a matter of body image issues.

> I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men,

Not sure about India but in a lot of European countries walking shirtless on the street might be a fineable offence. A larger discussion on the subject can be found on this recent /r/europe thread. [1]

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/qixnsa/filling_up_a...

And in the places where it's not fineable it still doesn't happen. It would be super weird to see a shirtless person on a street in a Central or Northern European city, you'd either think they have some screws loose or they are pretty drunk.

Parks, beaches, saunas it would of course be normal.

Well.. it is more of a class thing outside of residential complexes. You can see a lot of Indian males shirtless or wearing a inner vest inside their homes, but visible from outside (e.g. on balconies, etc).

But out in public, the only men w/o a shirt would be those who are too poor to afford one or those who are poor, doing manual work and who want to get rid of their shirt on a hot day.